Voiceofreason01:boywondered: Peki: Question: Is turning effective? It would seem to me that if your nose is pointing damn near vertical, any direction would get the nose down.

Turning wouldn't be effective because at that steep of a pitch their airspeed is bleeding off pretty quick and the ailerons/spoilers are going to become less effective because they don't has as much airflow. Also, being that slow would bring the stall on quicker because you lose lift on the wing that is on top of the turn....

This. By the time you can tell from the video that there's anything wrong it was probably already too late for the pilot to do anything about it.

Oh yeah, I figured the Bagram pilot didn't have the time/altitude (in flight, I would imagine it's pretty much the same thing).

Flab:juvandy: for the uninitiated, can someone explain how a cargo shift causes that?

Normally, a plane is "sitting" on its wings, with the center of gravity pretty much on top of the wings. Something came loose inside as the plane was climbing and all the stuff in the plane slid/rolled/tumbled/crashed towards the back, making the center of gravity move aft, causing the tail of the plane to dip and the nose to rise. The angle of wings became to high and they lost their lift (this is called a stall) and the plane fell down like a rock.

You can actually kinda simulate this yourself. When you put your hand out your car window with your thumb kinda curled down in front of your palm mimicking a wing, you will feel a little lift when held parallel to your direction of travel. As you tilt(angle of attack) up, before the air hits the underside of your palm to lift up, you will notice any lifting effect just drops off and your hand falls. This is a stall, and is what happens when cargo shifts and changes your angle of attack without enough speed, which causes a stall.

Peki:boywondered: More than likely, the pilots were pushing forward on the controls as hard as they could to get the nose down, but the elevator was not effective enough.

Question: Is turning effective? It would seem to me that if your nose is pointing damn near vertical, any direction would get the nose down.

/pilot in Bagram didn't have the time, obviously

Possibly, but if that were done at altitude (which is the only way there would be time to do it), the structural stresses on an aircraft that size would tear it apart... not to mention that assuming the aircraft actually survived such a maneuver, all the aerial acrobatics would very likely smash that several ton thing in the back through the fuselage.

theMagni:aedude01: flightmonkey88: Here is another unsettling bit, That bird went down on the edge of an old russian minefield at the end of the runway

Fark.

On another morbid note, what's everyone think? Did they die on impact/explosion or was it a burn to death scenario? Few things bother my psyche more when flying than the prospect of being in a plane crash, surviving, only to then burn to death.

Between the impact itself, the shockwave from the explosion, the loose cargo, the heat, smoke, and lack of air, it was an all-you-can eat buffet of instant death.

and no nevermind the way it landed would crush your spine in about .015 seconds causing instant death

ElLoco:Peki: boywondered: More than likely, the pilots were pushing forward on the controls as hard as they could to get the nose down, but the elevator was not effective enough.

Question: Is turning effective? It would seem to me that if your nose is pointing damn near vertical, any direction would get the nose down.

/pilot in Bagram didn't have the time, obviously

Possibly, but if that were done at altitude (which is the only way there would be time to do it), the structural stresses on an aircraft that size would tear it apart... not to mention that assuming the aircraft actually survived such a maneuver, all the aerial acrobatics would very likely smash that several ton thing in the back through the fuselage.

The last thing you want to do when you're stalled at low altitude is autorotate. That will end you up in a spin. Looking at the video, that almost happened in this accident. It never got past the incipient stage, though.

ElLoco:Peki: boywondered: More than likely, the pilots were pushing forward on the controls as hard as they could to get the nose down, but the elevator was not effective enough.

Question: Is turning effective? It would seem to me that if your nose is pointing damn near vertical, any direction would get the nose down.

/pilot in Bagram didn't have the time, obviously

Possibly, but if that were done at altitude (which is the only way there would be time to do it), the structural stresses on an aircraft that size would tear it apart... not to mention that assuming the aircraft actually survived such a maneuver, all the aerial acrobatics would very likely smash that several ton thing in the back through the fuselage.

Problem is with 75% of the aircraft weight in the tail, even turning can get the nose down. Theoretically the only thing that could have helped them is having engines powerful enough to (tow) the dead tail weight into something resembling acceleration, and even fighters, I think the only plane capable of actually accelerating towing its own weight in a vertical climb, is the F-15, and a cargo laden 747 that is not.

if you mean... by overloading the CG when (if) the cargo broke loose... maybe, but if you mean the 5 vehicles onboard being too heavy... Naa, I worked on the YAL-1 (747-400) the 400 can handle more weight than that.

I worked one where the pilot ejected and only got a few scratches on his arm from the sage brush while he was walking out to the nearest road.

I worked another where the co-pilot was beheaded by a bird coming thru the canopy.

The worst, hands down, was the A-10 Lt Col who ejected in a full bank horizontal to the ground; his seat worked perfectly right until it hit the Oak tree. It was worse than the decapitated guy because the lab reeked for weeks.

// have actually had a conversation, while eating lunch, that included the words "what's that? I think it's a piece of tongue..."// continued eating lunch...

So am I going to hell for laughing at that, and if so, can I sit next to you and you can tell me stories on the way?

I worked out there for five months..I was sitting at the bar right there..(A Pittsburgh Steeler bar,how random is that)Funny thing is,The second the plane flew in I realized it was a backpage photo I had seen in Maxim years earlier.

Yeah. I thought at first, pilot should have pitched down hard as soon as the looming stall was apparent. Then I kept watching and thought, s/he was probably full on it but there was no way to correct a fatal CG offset.

Knowing many pilots (years in Civil Air Patrol, I <3 Cessnas), at least they got to go out doing something they loved. Still, it's a shiatty way to go. If there's an upside, they were working, so life insurance should pay out double or more for for their families. Poor comfort though.

Matthew Keene:In the pre-video days, like 1865. They just had to say it with words when there was a bad accident.

"The Indianapolis Journal reports the following horrible accident, by which a Mrs. KRONAN lost her life: She was killed in crossing the railroad track on Illinois Street. At the time Mrs. KRONAN was attempting to cross, the Terre Haute train was coming in, while the switch engine of the I. & C. road was taking up seven or eight freight cars to the Terre Haute Depot. The woman attempted to get out of the way of the Terre Haute train, and in doing so was unfortunate enough to get in the way of the freight train. She was thrown upon the track, and two or three cars passed directly over her head, mangling it in a most fearful manner; not a feature of her face was left, and identification was impossible except by her dress. Her brains were scattered about, and even her tongue dislocated from her head, and left by the side of the rail. "

True story, my great grandfather was killed by a train.

Thanks to the news paper article about his wreck (1920's) I know he was decapitated half way through the face!

Glockenspiel Hero:WhyteRaven74: remus: I worked another where the co-pilot was beheaded by a bird coming thru the canopy.

I heard of an incident in the 70s, not sure what plane or exact location, but someone was working on a plane in a hanger, when the ejection seat went off...

Many years back I went to an airshow at Willow Grove NAS. My folks were sitting under a wing of a plane (shade) while I was standing in line to see a Sea King when I heard a muffled "boom" and saw a parachute unfurling in the air. Went right over me and landed on the plane my folks were under.

A young kid had been sitting in the cockpit of an A6 and was fiddling with the knobs and levers. The crew chief hadn't properly secured the ejection seat. Kid didn't survive. Last airshow there for a very long time.

A couple more tales I heard about. I was talking to a guy who worked on the refuelling trucks.There was an airshow in the UK, can't remember which one, that had two Mig's doing a routine. They hit each other head on. This crew were directly underneath, half on a break lying on the wing of a Hercules, half working on the truck. They saw the crash happen directly above them and a chunk of one of the Mig's landed on the tail of the Herc. Of the crew working the fuel truck one of the guys ran for cover. Under the fuel truck.All survived.

The other story I heard third hand. We had a training squadron that had Bulldogs, two seat, side by said, low wing prop trainers. Because it was the then primary RAF trainer it had parachutes, but not ejection seats. The chute was built into the seat back so you climbed onboard, did up the chute five point harness then did up the seat five point harness. Getting out was the reverse, hit the seat harness buckle then the chute buckle and step out.One day an instructor was flying solo when he had an engine fire, so he bailed out. Except, out of sheer habit, he had undone both buckles and jumped leaving the chute on the plane...

Your joke would have been funnier if you said that it's safe to rule out fuel exhaustion.Fuel starvation is when you have it, but it isn't getting to the engine. Fuel exhaustion is when you're out of juice.

China White Tea:This is a graphic video and an expletive is used at about the 1:15 mark.

...just the one?

The guy sees a plane crash and burst into a huge fireball with no comment. About a minute later he utters the expletive in question.Maybe it took him that long to remember someone asking him if he had properly secured the cargo, and him replying "Yeah, sure. Whatever."

traylor:I understand the nose up movement (pitch) was caused by the cargo shift. But why the roll? Isn't that a pilot error?

It's academic at that point, it mattered not to the outcome other than a small effect of the final position and attitude. The roll happened because either the pilot had some aileron/rudder authority and tried to bank or yaw (unlikely on the yaw), or one wing was more stalled than the other.

To the last point, the 747 has a fair bit of dihedral and a sideslipped condition can cause a rolling moment. Once the aircraft was ballistic, there's a chance that the local wind conditions helped initiate that roll.

For those interested in the ejection seat stories there are many "fun" inadvertent ejection stories at http://ejectionsite.com/ Check under "Eyewitness to Ejection" My favorite was the one where they guy was flying along, and woke up on the ground. No plane in sight. They finally found it many hundreds of miles away belly landed on some snow. He accidentally tripped the ejection somehow and when the seat went it knocked him out so he didn't know what happened. The least favorite was the kid (in Somalia or something) playing in a plane and got ejected through the hangar roof.